Four questions for Barry Po, Vice President, AI Solutions, Universal mCloud Corp

Universal mCloud Corp (CVE:MCLD, OTCQB:MCLDF), the artificial intelligence and analytics and IoT-connected asset care technology provider is currently hosting its inaugural mCloud Connect 2018 User Conference in Las Vegas. 

Proactive Investors spoke with Barry Po, Vice President, AI Solutions, Universal mCloud Corp about his role, what he sees coming up for the business, and how AI can play an integral role in the future. 

Q: Tell us about your role at Universal mCloud and what you see for the business in the next 12 months

A: As mCloud’s head of product management, I look after our product strategy and I serve as the interface between the business and technology development. I get to work with every mCloud stakeholder, including our customers, partners, and internal team to set the tone and priorities for product development.

My goal is always to help us understand what the market really wants, to translate that into a scalable technological offering that the company can take to market, and then to figure out how we are going to sustain that success.

If you look at what we want to achieve over the next 12 months, a lot of it is centered around organic growth.  We find ourselves today with a solid foundation in terms of how many assets we have under management and the revenue we are generating from each asset.

One of our most important product objectives is to take advantage of all the data we are collecting from the assets under our care, and to advance the way we use AI and machine learning.
Using AI will let us solve particularly painful problems we know our customers have. Many problems in the asset management world are not being addressed, because quite frankly, until now the technology has never really existed to solve them.

I am looking forward to digging into some of the customer relationships we have, to develop new ones, and to find ways to build on top of the growth we are achieving. I think there is a lot to look forward to on the business side, and also a lot of excitement around what we want to achieve on the technology side.

Q: What is the one thing that excites you most about the technology mCloud is working on?

A: There is a lot of talk today about AI in the context of how it could take away jobs or how “robots” are going to take over the world. That is perhaps how many of us see the low hanging fruit for AI development: AI automating a lot of routine jobs.

What excites me more though about AI is that when we tap into what you can accomplish through AI and machine learning, there are opportunities to provide people who take care of assets with AI-based insight that helps them make better decisions and do a better job. Instead of having to make a subjective judgement about whether an asset needs to be taken care of or whether they should be concerned that something is not working, we can provide them with access to an intelligent agent that works with them 24/7 to look at that asset from all these different points of view that would just be impossible for a person to see on their own.

You now have access to this agent that never gives up, and that offers up access to information and insight that people in the industry of energy asset management have never had at their fingertips before. A big component of the vision at mCloud is making that technology accessible and simple.

Q: Why is what you just talked about important both to the business world and to society as a whole?

A: I think those are two distinct questions. If you look at what is important for business, I would point to the value in creating economies of scale. So much of asset management is tied back to things that take a lot of time while not really creating a lot of value. We find people spending time doing things like recording and transcribing information on paper, which creates a lot of work, but doesn’t really solve any problems.

If you ever really want to reach a global market, you have to be able to take the routine work out of your business so that you can remain focused on the higher-order value that you bring to your customer base. That is one of the reasons AI is so interesting in the enterprise.

Looking at society in general, being “green” or “sustainable” is certainly something we see in various aspects of our lives, though the reality is most general consumers aren’t sustainability experts.  Technologies like AI can play an important role by taking all the complexity out of being more energy efficient. That is really exciting as we look to the future.

Q: What do you personally hope to get out of mCLoud Connect 2018?

A: Having spent so much time in the B2B world looking at how different industries take up new technology, I think businesses often have little time to reflect on the way technology is poised to change the way their industry operates.  Having that opportunity to reflect is one of the things I hope the conference offers to those who attend.

It is an opportunity to step back, look at the bigger picture, and consider how we want to be part of the change that is on the way. I hope we will all get to think about how we can act as positive agents of change as new technology like AI and IoT makes its way into many different kinds of energy assets.

The opportunity to discuss amongst peers and to have lively debates about where we think the next best opportunity for technology could be — those are things I hope we all get out of the conference.

Story by ProactiveInvestors